You'd think that the people polled were actually asked if they minded that the phone records of tens of millions of US citizens were turned over to the NSA without review, warrant, or subpeona. Of course, they weren't.
Should the National Security Agency be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States?
?
1. The NSA program in question apparently gathered call statstics on every call made via the involved carriers for the time period in question. Every call. "Between terrorism suspects" is one thing. "Between every American citizen" is another. 2. The records involved were for all the telephone calls. Not just the ones made between terror suspects, and not just ones that were intercontinental.
I want to make this clear: if the information we're hearing about this program is correct, and you used one of the carriers involved during the time period in question, the NSA now has a record of every time you called out for pizza. Unless you're ordering from Osama Bin Laden's Italian Eatery in Turkmenistan, I don't see how this makes sense.
Let me put it this way: the debate over really important and substantive issues of policy is too critical to let it get hijacked by partisan buffoonery. When I see something which I feel to be obviously, factually, verifiably, empirically true, and someone says "you're only saying that because you're [male | white | a jew | well-off | poor | straight | liberal | nuts]," it makes me want to tear what little hair I have left, out.
So you can tell when I feel strongly about something because I do my best to drop anything that might be considered inflammatory speech and try to let the facts speak for themselves. (I also note that it worked: when amightywind responded to me, he did so by imputing things to me that I didn't say, presumably because he thought it might discredit me. I didn't even get close to saying those things, so there's nothing to argue.)
In 1975, a congressional investigation revealed that the NSA had been intercepting, without warrants, international communications for more than 20 years at the behest of the CIA and other agencies. The spy campaign, code-named "Shamrock," led to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was designed to protect Americans from illegal eavesdropping...
Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest's lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.
The NSA's explanation did little to satisfy Qwest's lawyers. "They told (Qwest) they didn't want to do that because FISA might not agree with them," one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest's suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general's office. A second person confirmed this version of events.
So: the NSA asks for a massive database of call records, not limited to a specific group of people, without a warrant. Qwest asks them to please take it to the FISA court. The NSA refuses on the grounds that the FISA court might say no. (Note: the approval rate for FISA requests is signfigantly higher than 99%.)
As I said. The current administration simply does not want to be constrained by the rule of law.
First, I should have said at the outset that I'm bringing in a secondary topic (the warrantless wiretap issue) to serve as a proxy for discssion of the phone records issue. I should have said that at the outset because I don't want anyone to think that I'm trying to pull a fast one (letting poll data for one thing slide as reflecting the other), but since the two issues revolve around similar questions (the limits of the authority of the executive) I think it makes sense to discuss them together. And with that said:
Providing the government a necessary defensive tools it needs to fight terror from within falls somewhat short of creating a police state, don't you think? The narcissists on the left will howl at *any* perceived incursion on their rights even though tens of thousands of innocent citizens might be murdered otherwise.
I never said that fighting the war on terrorism would require the creation of "a police state." Nor did I suggest that we are already living in a police state, although you seem fairly quick to want me to say that - perhaps it's easier to label me a wild-eyed hippie freak than to, you know, actually address the thing that I said. Which was essentially this:
Instead, the Attorney General has repeatedly asserted that laws governing the gathering of intelligence data, even domestically, are not within the purview of Congress to issue, and that the executive branch can simply disregard them...
Here we go. Alberto Gonzales is a fascist! Bush is a liar! Fire Rumsfeld! Yawn. I for one appreciate the prosperty they have brought to our great nation, and the heroic foreign policy they have pursued.
I didn't call Alberto Gonzales a fascist, or Bush a liar, and I haven't called for Rumsfeld to be fired. (See my earlier point about creating a strawman.)
What I did say was that the administration has claimed repeatedly that Congress does not have the legal authority to regulate any aspect of the administration's intelligence gathering operation. That's not name calling, it's fact: FISA clearly and unambiguously lays out the framework for conducting certain kinds of surveillance, and the administration has flat out said that it doesn't need to abide by those rules. I'm not demonizing the administration, I'm quoting them, and if you think I'm exaggerating you should actually read the memorandums and testimony from Gonzales and Yoo. I leave googling that testimony as an exercise for the reader.
Well, that is what you read in the New York Times, or see on CNN. If their polls were correct Al Gore would be President. What you started as a thoughtful, though flawed, argument has decended into a mindless partisan rant. Shame on you.
I'll be the first to admit that polls are flawed. If you choose to believe that this is because of a media conspiracy on the part of the NYT, CNN, and the rest of what's often called the "liberal media," fine. But I think that even you would have a hard time arguing that Fox News is biased towards the left, and even they are showing anemicpollnumbers for the president. The reason I brought the poll numbers about the censure issue up in the first place is because you asserted that a "great silent majority" of American citizens sided with you on this issue: I can only assume you called them silent because of their failure to speak up in polls like this one.
As for whether or not this is a "mindless partisan rant," I leave it to the readers of Slashdot to decide for themselves which one of us is trying to make this into a partisan issue. But in the interest of disclosure: I think it's the one who implied that I'm a "narcissist" and a "loonie."
The desire of the vast majority of Americans to root out terror in the US has given the government the mandate to use communication records. The nefarious behavior of the government goes only as far as that mandate. If you want to rail against someone for the loss of privacy, rail against the great silent majority in America who will not tolerate a repeat of 911.
Interesting. You've conflated the (obviously and unarguably true) fact that most Americans want the government to prevent terrorist attacks against us with the assertion that the administration is free to do whatever it wants in pursuit of that goal.
Obviously, I disagree. Defense of our country still must take place within the framework of our system of laws and the Constitution of the United States. To the degree that the laws need amending, I think that they clearly should be - although the current administration has shied away from this path. Instead, the Attorney General has repeatedly asserted that laws governing the gathering of intelligence data, even domestically, are not within the purview of Congress to issue, and that the executive branch can simply disregard them. When Congress has offered to make changes to legislation to make it more palatable to the administration, their offers were rebuffed: simply put, the administration does not wish to be governed by laws, regardless of their actual content.
I assume for the sake of this arugment that if approximately half of those polled supported a censure resolution on this issue, then more than half would be opposed to the wiretaps generally.
That means in our first game, magic has just returned to the near future. It means that you are one of the first people to combine magic, technology and weapons to accomplish a clandestine goal. You are one of the first Shadowrunners.
You know the really sad part? There probably could have been a great game here. The backstory for the Shadowrun game had a great buildup involving the return of magic to the world, and Unexplained Genetic Expression, the Indian War, and the conflict between haves and have-nots and tribes and governments and corporations and whatall in general. The backstory included tons of "pre-Shadowrun" goodness that would have made for a great story setting.
But this doesn't sound like that game.
Will that game ever be released? Dunno. In the meantime, I'll be waiting for Shadowrun: The Great Ghost Dance.
That's correct. I was responding to someone who posted a question about Comcast.
(I didn't really answer his question, though. I just saw the word Comcast and entered some kind of fugue state. When I came to my senses, my office was in a shambles and I'd typed up that screed.)
A little bit before the new year, I picked up a new HD set. I was pretty excited about it. If I'd known the runaround I was going to get from Comcast, I wouldn't have been.
1. I call Comcast. They tell me that an HD tuner and service is already in my plan, and all I need to do is pick one up at the office. When I show up (It's a 20 minute drive), they tell me that they're out. But they'll call me when they come in. 2. I check in after a couple of weeks. The person at Comcast says, "Oh - no, they're not gonna call you. You have to keep calling us." "Great. Hey - does my office have these HD tuners in yet?" "Yes!" Except when I get there, it turns out they don't, and haven't for days. I pitch a hissy fit, and they give me an "all in one" box (HD + DVR), promising not to charge me for the DVR part. I leave, mollified. The box doesn't work. 3. Guy from Comcast shows up... 8 days later. "Yup, it's broken," he says. He swaps the DVR out with a brand new box. Beautiful high-definition television, complete with DVR functionality! It works! For a few hours, anyway. That evening, the hard drive (or something) on the device starts making a clicking noise. The DVR part no longer works. 4. Guy from Comcast shows up... another TWO WEEKS LATER. He starts to swap out the box, discovers that the new one he has doesn't work at all, and puts the old one back. "It's a real problem," he admits. "All the techs just had a meeting about it. We unplug the units from the network to take them out, something changes in their config, and they have to be taken back to the office." Great. "Call to schedule another appointment in a couple of weeks." 5. I schedule another appointment. I call out from work to be there. Then someone leaves a message on the answering machine saying... they're out of set-top boxes again, and I've stayed home for nothing.
Oh, I have nothing in particular against RoleMaster. I kinda think of it as one of the O(rp)Gs. (Original role-playing games, but with the same sort of vibe as original gangta, if you get my drift.) It's what D&D would be if D&D had never had a second edition and still had Gary Gygax's input.
"My Life with Master" is one of those games that consistently pops up in conversation with people who know far more about games than I do, and I have no earthly idea why I haven't played it yet. Should I manage to lose a point of Weariness, I'll probably pick up a copy and play it, thus also reducing my Self-Loathing.
You know, I keep seeing these stories on pen and paper roleplaying games pop up, and there's never any damn coverage of the really interesting and fun games that keep coming out from small, independant publishers.
Slashdotters, please: if you're sick and tired of shelling out twenty to forty bucks for the latest supplement, how about throwing a little money to some of the little guys who are making truly innovative stuff? Look here for some ideas on where to start, and I'll plug a few of my favorites. (Disclaimer: I know one of the authors of some of the following games. He's a great guy. But he doesn't pay me to say this, or to plug his games.;) )
Kill Puppies for Satan: An Unfunny Roleplaying Game. "the system is minimal in the way that particularly irritates people who would rather be playing rolemaster or millenium's end. you have only six stats, for instance, and that's counting generously. one stat is how many people hate you"
Dogs in the Vineyard. The Lord may be your shepard, but sometimes he can use a gnarly old Watchdog to help keep the wolves at bay.
Primetime Adventures. Roleplaying games are about telling stories - why not make them about television shows instead?
Polaris. Once upon a time, as far north as north can go, there lived the greatest people that this world will ever see. They are gone now, destroyed just as the world destroys all beautiful things.
Please make a few indie developers happy. You have nothing to lose but your twenty-sided dice.
the application is 'about the same speed as before', but the operating system is not. The entire machine is faster. My wife has the 15" MBP and I have the 17" G4. The difference is vast.
I understand - what I'm saying is that the performance gain in hardware is pretty much canceled out by having to run the app through the code-morphing Rosetta foo. Since the only thing that I really have performance issues with is Photoshop, I don't yet have a compelling reason to upgrade.
That's not to say that I don't drool over them a little, but I have one of the last Powerbook G4 models, so trying to upgrade now would get me a smack from the spouse.:)
I suspect that it is a heat issue, yes. I seem to recall seeing another article (can't find the link just now) that suggested that the actual CPU is underclocked as well.
Honestly, the only thing I do with my laptop that's really CPU intensive is Photoshop. (Okay - and some of the more obnxoiusly resource-intensive parts of OS X itself). For me, the real test of performance will be cranking through a bunch of sharpening scripts under Photoshop on an 8 megapixel, 16-bit image. Since Photoshop CS2 is still a Rosetta application, the performance numbers I've seen for it say "about the same speed as before," so there's no real point in me upgrading yet.
Then Spock goes all Pon-Fahr, snaps Kirk's spine at the third cervical vertabrae, and takes both green-skinned aliens at once. Fortunately, Bones is on hand to repair the central nervous system using a device that looks suspiciously like a portable tape deck circa 1972.
You turned the question around. You answered a question about Linux being hard to use with another question about Windows possibly being hard to use. It seems that Linux proponents never want to even come close to the possibility that Linux might be less intuitive or suitable for newbies than Windows is.
Dude, I'm running a study group for a bunch of folks who are working up to take (or are considering taking) the RHCE exam. Some of them have effectively zero Linux experience. I have no problem with the idea that Windows is just plain easier in a lot of respects.
But statements like "Linux is too hard" don't occur in a vaccuum. They're always made in comparison to some other operating system, because if the person stating it hadn't used another OS he'd have said something like "computers are too hard," instead, or "I tried Linux and it was too hard, I wonder if Windows is any better." If you can't talk about what makes the one experience better or worse than the other, what hope is there of improvement?
I wish I still had the link, but a few months ago, someone wrote an article based on his experience installing Windows XP on bare metal, "for the first time." His somewhat fictionalized conclusion was that the Windows install process had a way to go before it would win real acceptance on the desktop. Which is all by way of saying that "ease of use" is a relative thing.
If you carefully reread the seven words which formed my question in its entireity, I think you'll fail to find a single "bash" on Microsoft, Windows, Bill Gates, or any of their affiliates, related products, relatives, or pets.
liposuction stated that "Not all of us are as good at picking it up as [the people I was asking for help] were," and that his repeated efforts to learn the OS (whatever that means) were not progressing well. But clearly he's starting from somewhere, because (I assume) he's already doing fine with Windows. So in the interest of finding out specifically what helped him in the past, I asked him how he learned Windows.
(A corollary to the posted article: Linux snobs definitely hurt the mainstream acceptance of Linux. On the other hand, jumping to the conclusion that everyone is a Linux snob doesn't help either.)
A telecom manager submitted an essay to Network World that paints a sadly humorous picture of what the mega-telecom mergers really mean on the ground."
If I had to guess, I'd say that it meant they'd fallen and can't get up.
(This is a throwback to the annoying corporate speak article from a yesterday. Not only does the phrase "on the ground" add nothing to most of the sentences in which it appears, but it's easy to make a case that the phrase was popularized by uber-asshole Donald Rumsfeld. That's a double whammy right there.)
Oh my God imagine -- the Basic version might be missing some enhancements... geese, guess it's time we grill Microsoft for re-writing the definition of "Basic."
I know that you're trying to be sarcastic here, but really, have you ever heard of an operating system release where different trim levels (XP "Pro" vs. "Home", for example) were characterized by how pretty the GUI is?
I mean, if you're going to charge varying rates depending on the featureset, then certainly there's some functionality that Joe Home User likely doesn't need - logging in through an Active Directory server, for example. But the GUI? That's just weird.
But it's not just pirates who will be blocked from Windows' fanciest graphics. The Aero display also won't be available to those who buy Windows Vista Basic, the low-end consumer version of the operating system.
That's sort of an odd message to send, isn't it? "We think you're a software pirate. Or maybe you're just poor. Either way, you don't get the shiny shiny."
No longer is there more work to fill an already full plate, now there are 'opportunities for growth'. There are no company layoffs, there are 'realignments'. Difficult people are merely referred to as 'more challenging' than others. I dislike this non-speak as much as any person bred from a technical background. However, in order to match my new colleagues in the give and take of business life, phrases like 'functions', 'deliverables', and 'value-add' are finding their way into my vocabulary."
I can actually defend a couple of these with a straight face. "Deliverable" is the best of the lot: it represents something that you must actually give the client, and as it refers to something that's usually specified in a contract, its usage is generally completely unambiguous. I can't think of another word that does its job so succinctly. If you need to (god help you) manage a real project for a real client, you're gonna have to just make your peace with that word.
Value-add isn't really that bad - it's usually used to indicate what a business' role is in the equation (as in, if the business has no place to add value to something, it probably shouldn't be involved in the process). It at least isn't deliberately obfuscating.
With all that said, cutting through the real BS corporate speak (in a polite but firm manner) is a good way to distinguish you from empty suits, and I've found it's generally respected. Even among the empty suits. As an example: my wife was doing technical training and curriculum design for corporate clients for a while. In one meeting she attended following a training class, one of the suits asked her what "opportunities" she discovered during the class. When she asked for clarification, the suit said, "You know - opportunities. Things that didn't go quite as you'd hoped."
"Oh, you mean problems! Yes, there were a lot of problems." That was the point at which people started to take her seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
The precise wording of the question issued by Rassmussen (emphasis mine):
?
1. The NSA program in question apparently gathered call statstics on every call made via the involved carriers for the time period in question. Every call. "Between terrorism suspects" is one thing. "Between every American citizen" is another.
2. The records involved were for all the telephone calls. Not just the ones made between terror suspects, and not just ones that were intercontinental.
I want to make this clear: if the information we're hearing about this program is correct, and you used one of the carriers involved during the time period in question, the NSA now has a record of every time you called out for pizza. Unless you're ordering from Osama Bin Laden's Italian Eatery in Turkmenistan, I don't see how this makes sense.
Why the hell not?
:)
That's a fair question.
Let me put it this way: the debate over really important and substantive issues of policy is too critical to let it get hijacked by partisan buffoonery. When I see something which I feel to be obviously, factually, verifiably, empirically true, and someone says "you're only saying that because you're [male | white | a jew | well-off | poor | straight | liberal | nuts]," it makes me want to tear what little hair I have left, out.
So you can tell when I feel strongly about something because I do my best to drop anything that might be considered inflammatory speech and try to let the facts speak for themselves. (I also note that it worked: when amightywind responded to me, he did so by imputing things to me that I didn't say, presumably because he thought it might discredit me. I didn't even get close to saying those things, so there's nothing to argue.)
Quoting USA Today:
So: the NSA asks for a massive database of call records, not limited to a specific group of people, without a warrant. Qwest asks them to please take it to the FISA court. The NSA refuses on the grounds that the FISA court might say no. (Note: the approval rate for FISA requests is signfigantly higher than 99%.)
As I said. The current administration simply does not want to be constrained by the rule of law.
I never said that fighting the war on terrorism would require the creation of "a police state." Nor did I suggest that we are already living in a police state, although you seem fairly quick to want me to say that - perhaps it's easier to label me a wild-eyed hippie freak than to, you know, actually address the thing that I said. Which was essentially this:
I didn't call Alberto Gonzales a fascist, or Bush a liar, and I haven't called for Rumsfeld to be fired. (See my earlier point about creating a strawman.)
What I did say was that the administration has claimed repeatedly that Congress does not have the legal authority to regulate any aspect of the administration's intelligence gathering operation. That's not name calling, it's fact: FISA clearly and unambiguously lays out the framework for conducting certain kinds of surveillance, and the administration has flat out said that it doesn't need to abide by those rules. I'm not demonizing the administration, I'm quoting them, and if you think I'm exaggerating you should actually read the memorandums and testimony from Gonzales and Yoo. I leave googling that testimony as an exercise for the reader.
I'll be the first to admit that polls are flawed. If you choose to believe that this is because of a media conspiracy on the part of the NYT, CNN, and the rest of what's often called the "liberal media," fine. But I think that even you would have a hard time arguing that Fox News is biased towards the left, and even they are showing anemic poll numbers for the president. The reason I brought the poll numbers about the censure issue up in the first place is because you asserted that a "great silent majority" of American citizens sided with you on this issue: I can only assume you called them silent because of their failure to speak up in polls like this one.
As for whether or not this is a "mindless partisan rant," I leave it to the readers of Slashdot to decide for themselves which one of us is trying to make this into a partisan issue. But in the interest of disclosure: I think it's the one who implied that I'm a "narcissist" and a "loonie."
Interesting. You've conflated the (obviously and unarguably true) fact that most Americans want the government to prevent terrorist attacks against us with the assertion that the administration is free to do whatever it wants in pursuit of that goal.
Obviously, I disagree. Defense of our country still must take place within the framework of our system of laws and the Constitution of the United States. To the degree that the laws need amending, I think that they clearly should be - although the current administration has shied away from this path. Instead, the Attorney General has repeatedly asserted that laws governing the gathering of intelligence data, even domestically, are not within the purview of Congress to issue, and that the executive branch can simply disregard them. When Congress has offered to make changes to legislation to make it more palatable to the administration, their offers were rebuffed: simply put, the administration does not wish to be governed by laws, regardless of their actual content.
As for the rhetorical device you use - that the opinions you hold are that of the "great silent majority" - I can only say that in polls on a similar issue (the "warrantless wiretap" question), the data would seem to hold otherwise. In a poll run by the American Research Group, there was a near 50-50 split on the issue of whether the president should be censured over the NSA warrantless wiretap issue.
Republicans (33%): Favor censure: 29% Oppose censure: 57% Undecided: 14%
Democrats (37%): Favor censure: 70% Oppose censure: 26% Undecided: 4%
Independents (30%): Favor censure: 42% Oppose censure: 47% Undecided: 11%
Total: Favor censure: 46% Oppose censure: 44% Undecided: 10%
I assume for the sake of this arugment that if approximately half of those polled supported a censure resolution on this issue, then more than half would be opposed to the wiretaps generally.
You know the really sad part? There probably could have been a great game here. The backstory for the Shadowrun game had a great buildup involving the return of magic to the world, and Unexplained Genetic Expression, the Indian War, and the conflict between haves and have-nots and tribes and governments and corporations and whatall in general. The backstory included tons of "pre-Shadowrun" goodness that would have made for a great story setting.
But this doesn't sound like that game.
Will that game ever be released? Dunno. In the meantime, I'll be waiting for Shadowrun: The Great Ghost Dance.
That's correct. I was responding to someone who posted a question about Comcast.
(I didn't really answer his question, though. I just saw the word Comcast and entered some kind of fugue state. When I came to my senses, my office was in a shambles and I'd typed up that screed.)
A little bit before the new year, I picked up a new HD set. I was pretty excited about it. If I'd known the runaround I was going to get from Comcast, I wouldn't have been.
1. I call Comcast. They tell me that an HD tuner and service is already in my plan, and all I need to do is pick one up at the office. When I show up (It's a 20 minute drive), they tell me that they're out. But they'll call me when they come in.
2. I check in after a couple of weeks. The person at Comcast says, "Oh - no, they're not gonna call you. You have to keep calling us." "Great. Hey - does my office have these HD tuners in yet?" "Yes!" Except when I get there, it turns out they don't, and haven't for days. I pitch a hissy fit, and they give me an "all in one" box (HD + DVR), promising not to charge me for the DVR part. I leave, mollified. The box doesn't work.
3. Guy from Comcast shows up... 8 days later. "Yup, it's broken," he says. He swaps the DVR out with a brand new box. Beautiful high-definition television, complete with DVR functionality! It works! For a few hours, anyway. That evening, the hard drive (or something) on the device starts making a clicking noise. The DVR part no longer works.
4. Guy from Comcast shows up... another TWO WEEKS LATER. He starts to swap out the box, discovers that the new one he has doesn't work at all, and puts the old one back. "It's a real problem," he admits. "All the techs just had a meeting about it. We unplug the units from the network to take them out, something changes in their config, and they have to be taken back to the office." Great. "Call to schedule another appointment in a couple of weeks."
5. I schedule another appointment. I call out from work to be there. Then someone leaves a message on the answering machine saying... they're out of set-top boxes again, and I've stayed home for nothing.
Fuck Comcast, right in their fucking eye.
Oh, I have nothing in particular against RoleMaster. I kinda think of it as one of the O(rp)Gs. (Original role-playing games, but with the same sort of vibe as original gangta, if you get my drift.) It's what D&D would be if D&D had never had a second edition and still had Gary Gygax's input.
(Well, okay, no. I gues that's Lejendary Adventures. But you get the idea.)
"My Life with Master" is one of those games that consistently pops up in conversation with people who know far more about games than I do, and I have no earthly idea why I haven't played it yet. Should I manage to lose a point of Weariness, I'll probably pick up a copy and play it, thus also reducing my Self-Loathing.
Slashdotters, please: if you're sick and tired of shelling out twenty to forty bucks for the latest supplement, how about throwing a little money to some of the little guys who are making truly innovative stuff? Look here for some ideas on where to start, and I'll plug a few of my favorites. (Disclaimer: I know one of the authors of some of the following games. He's a great guy. But he doesn't pay me to say this, or to plug his games.
Please make a few indie developers happy. You have nothing to lose but your twenty-sided dice.
"Yellow Sheep River."
Well, I guess it beats "Sheep Yellow River," which can sometimes be found downhill from where large numbers of sheep are grazing.
Holy crap - it's Kryptos all over again!
I understand - what I'm saying is that the performance gain in hardware is pretty much canceled out by having to run the app through the code-morphing Rosetta foo. Since the only thing that I really have performance issues with is Photoshop, I don't yet have a compelling reason to upgrade.
That's not to say that I don't drool over them a little, but I have one of the last Powerbook G4 models, so trying to upgrade now would get me a smack from the spouse.
I suspect that it is a heat issue, yes. I seem to recall seeing another article (can't find the link just now) that suggested that the actual CPU is underclocked as well.
Honestly, the only thing I do with my laptop that's really CPU intensive is Photoshop. (Okay - and some of the more obnxoiusly resource-intensive parts of OS X itself). For me, the real test of performance will be cranking through a bunch of sharpening scripts under Photoshop on an 8 megapixel, 16-bit image. Since Photoshop CS2 is still a Rosetta application, the performance numbers I've seen for it say "about the same speed as before," so there's no real point in me upgrading yet.
Then Spock goes all Pon-Fahr, snaps Kirk's spine at the third cervical vertabrae, and takes both green-skinned aliens at once. Fortunately, Bones is on hand to repair the central nervous system using a device that looks suspiciously like a portable tape deck circa 1972.
And all he'd have to do is google for "kirk spock slash fiction" for metric tons of story ideas already written for him.
Dude, I'm running a study group for a bunch of folks who are working up to take (or are considering taking) the RHCE exam. Some of them have effectively zero Linux experience. I have no problem with the idea that Windows is just plain easier in a lot of respects.
But statements like "Linux is too hard" don't occur in a vaccuum. They're always made in comparison to some other operating system, because if the person stating it hadn't used another OS he'd have said something like "computers are too hard," instead, or "I tried Linux and it was too hard, I wonder if Windows is any better." If you can't talk about what makes the one experience better or worse than the other, what hope is there of improvement?
I wish I still had the link, but a few months ago, someone wrote an article based on his experience installing Windows XP on bare metal, "for the first time." His somewhat fictionalized conclusion was that the Windows install process had a way to go before it would win real acceptance on the desktop. Which is all by way of saying that "ease of use" is a relative thing.
If you carefully reread the seven words which formed my question in its entireity, I think you'll fail to find a single "bash" on Microsoft, Windows, Bill Gates, or any of their affiliates, related products, relatives, or pets.
liposuction stated that "Not all of us are as good at picking it up as [the people I was asking for help] were," and that his repeated efforts to learn the OS (whatever that means) were not progressing well. But clearly he's starting from somewhere, because (I assume) he's already doing fine with Windows. So in the interest of finding out specifically what helped him in the past, I asked him how he learned Windows.
(A corollary to the posted article: Linux snobs definitely hurt the mainstream acceptance of Linux. On the other hand, jumping to the conclusion that everyone is a Linux snob doesn't help either.)
I try not to be a Linux snob - well, that's not true. I try not to be an OS X snob, and not being a Linux snob sorta comes with that turf. Regardless:
Can I ask how you learned Windows?
You, sir, are possessed of one of the most brilliant minds of your generation.
No, John D, I meant AKAImBatman.
In response to this news, only one thing can be said: "Loser! Idiot!"
If I had to guess, I'd say that it meant they'd fallen and can't get up.
(This is a throwback to the annoying corporate speak article from a yesterday. Not only does the phrase "on the ground" add nothing to most of the sentences in which it appears, but it's easy to make a case that the phrase was popularized by uber-asshole Donald Rumsfeld. That's a double whammy right there.)
I know that you're trying to be sarcastic here, but really, have you ever heard of an operating system release where different trim levels (XP "Pro" vs. "Home", for example) were characterized by how pretty the GUI is?
I mean, if you're going to charge varying rates depending on the featureset, then certainly there's some functionality that Joe Home User likely doesn't need - logging in through an Active Directory server, for example. But the GUI? That's just weird.
That's sort of an odd message to send, isn't it? "We think you're a software pirate. Or maybe you're just poor. Either way, you don't get the shiny shiny."
I can actually defend a couple of these with a straight face. "Deliverable" is the best of the lot: it represents something that you must actually give the client, and as it refers to something that's usually specified in a contract, its usage is generally completely unambiguous. I can't think of another word that does its job so succinctly. If you need to (god help you) manage a real project for a real client, you're gonna have to just make your peace with that word.
Value-add isn't really that bad - it's usually used to indicate what a business' role is in the equation (as in, if the business has no place to add value to something, it probably shouldn't be involved in the process). It at least isn't deliberately obfuscating.
With all that said, cutting through the real BS corporate speak (in a polite but firm manner) is a good way to distinguish you from empty suits, and I've found it's generally respected. Even among the empty suits. As an example: my wife was doing technical training and curriculum design for corporate clients for a while. In one meeting she attended following a training class, one of the suits asked her what "opportunities" she discovered during the class. When she asked for clarification, the suit said, "You know - opportunities. Things that didn't go quite as you'd hoped."
"Oh, you mean problems! Yes, there were a lot of problems." That was the point at which people started to take her seriously.